A 51-year-old male patient presented to the emergency room with an anterior ST-elevation myocardial infarction. After a loading dose of both ticagrelor and aspirin, the patient underwent primary-PCI on the left anterior descending coronary artery with stent implantation. After successful revascularization, medical therapy included beta-blockers, statins, and angiotensin II receptor antagonists. Two days later, ivabradine was also administered in order to reduce heart rate at target, but the patient developed a severe symptomatic bradycardia and sinus arrest, even requiring administration of both atropine and adrenaline. Ivabradine and ticagrelor have been then suspended and this latter changed with prasugrel. Any other similar event was not reported during the following days. This clinical case raised concerns about the safety of the combination of beta-blockers and ivabradine in patients treated with ticagrelor, particularly during the acute phase of an acute coronary syndrome. These two latter drugs, in particular, might interact with the same receptor. In fact, ivabradine directly modulates the If-channel which is also modulated by the cyclic adenosine monophosphate levels. These latter have been shown to increase after ticagrelor assumption via inhibition of adenosine uptake by erythrocytes. Further studies are warrant to better clarify the safety of this association.

Objectives: we aimed to analyze incidence and costs of hip fractures in Italy. Methods: we analyzed the Italian Ministry of Health national hospitalization and DRGs databases concerning fractures occurred in people ≥65 between 2003 and 2005. We have estimated incidence and direct costs sustained by the National Health Service for hospitalization and treatment of hip fractures on the basis of the value of the Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs) referring to hip fractures. The expenses of rehabilitation and indirect costs were based on re-gional estimations. Results: between 2003 and 2005 we registered almost 90,000 hospital admissions per year (corresponding to 75,000 patients) because of hip fractures in people aged ≥65. Women accounted for the majority of hospital admissions due to hip fractures (78.0%; n=214,519). Among women, 84.3% of fractures (n=180,861) occurred in patients ≥75, which is known to be the age group with the highest prevalence of osteoporosis. Hospitalizations of both men and women showed an increasing trend across all the examined period. Hospital costs increased up to 467 million euros in 2005, while rehabilitation costs rose up to 531 million in the same year. Conclusions: hip fractures in the Italian population are increasing and represent a major public health challenge.

We designed a targeted-array called GOLD (Gain or Loss Detection) Chip consisting of 900 FISH-mapped non-overlapping BAC clones spanning the whole genome to enhance the coverage of 66 unique human genomic regions involved in well known microdeletion/microduplication syndromes. The array has a 10 Mb backbone to guarantee the detection of the aneuploidies, and has an implemented resolution for telomeres, and for regions involved in common genomic diseases. In order to evaluate clinical diagnostic applicability of GOLDChip, analytical validity was carried-out via retrospective analysis of DNA isolated from a series of cytogenetically normal amniocytes and cytogenetically abnormal DNA obtained from cultured amniocytes, peripheral blood and/or cell lines. We recruited 47 DNA samples corresponding to pathologies with significant frequencies (Cri du Chat syndrome, Williams syndrome, Prader Willi/Angelman syndromes, Smith-Magenis syndrome, DiGeorge syndrome, Miller-Dieker syndrome, chromosomes 13, 18 and 21 trisomies). We set up an experimental protocol that allowed to identify chromosomal rearrangements in all the DNA samples analyzed. Our results provide evidence that our targeted BAC array can be used for the identification of the most common microdeletion syndromes and common aneuploidies.

Aim of the study was to investigate: 1) if second eye cataract surgery under topical anesthesia is more painful than surgery on the first eye, 2) if pain experienced during the procedure on the first eye may predict the pain of the second procedure, and 3) if patients cooperation is different between the first and the second eye procedure.Seventy-three consecutive patients undergoing bilateral non-simultaneous cataract surgery were prospectively included in the study. Surgical technique was sutureless clear corneal phacoemulsification under topical anesthesia. Immediately after surgery every patient graded the pain experienced using a visual analogue scale (VAS) from 0 (no pain) to 10 (unbearable pain). At the end of each procedure the surgeon graded patients cooperation using a 4-point scale.Mean VAS score was 2.35 (SD 2.63) for the first eye and 2.89 (SD 2.93) for the second eye. Such a difference was not statistically significant (p=0.1777, Wilcoxon test). The correlation between the VAS score of the first and that of the second procedure was statistically significant (r=0.5514, p<0.0001, Spearman rank correlation). Patients cooperation was 2.64 (SD 0.63) during the first procedure and 2.52 (SD 0.79) during the second procedure; this difference was not statistically significant (p=0.1769, Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks test).After uneventful cataract surgery under topical anesthesia, pain experienced and cooperation did not differ between first and second eye procedures. A correlation was found between pain scores of the first and the second eye procedures.